Category: Web Services

  • Coolest. Stroller. Evar!

    I just saw the Cadillac of strollers: the Chariot Cavalier 1.  It is a lot like your typical joggersport stroller, but it’s just a little bit more beefy and a and just looks so cool in person.  It has the required handbrake and all the goodies.  It’s really sturdy but only about 21 pounds.

    My kids are so going to roll around in something like this.

  • Skype 0.94

    There is a new Skype beta out.  More news can be found at Betanews.

  • BBC News on Multimedia Mobiles

    I was reading a BBC News article on multimedia mobile phones via BBC’s WAP site this evening.  Jo Twist gave an excellent overview of Series 60 phones and also hinted at the enhanced capabilities of Series 90.

    I’ve got a 3650 in my pocket, but I have seen the light, and it is tinted Series 90.

  • MIDP 2.0 Examples on Series 90

    I’ve been going through the examples included in the Wireless Toolkit on the s90 emulator.  I’m starting to jive with the emulated interface.  Of course I should expect it, but it’s nice to take a stock MIDlet and have it conform to the sexy Aqua-like s90 interface.

    In order to run your MIDlets on the s90 emulator from within the WTK2.0, just copy the Series_90_MIDP_Concept_SDK_Beta_0_1 directory in to the wtklib/devices directory of your WTK2.0 install.  When you restart the application, you should be able to select the Series 90 emulator.

    At first glance, I thought of this device as a high end taco.  After tinkering with the Emulator, I think that it is going to be a whole lot more.  Hopefully the 7700 will be the first in a fleet of Series 90 devices.  That would rock.

  • Fixing SETI@home

    I was having issues with SETI@home last night and this morning.  I have it set up to start in screensaved mode.  It kept trying to start up and quickly shut down, leaving a row of little green icons in my tray.  I tried starting it up in standalone mode and got an error numbered 100.  Here’s the fix from the site:

    If you are unable to connect due to “100” errors (or perhaps “41”) you may need to exit SETI@home, remove the files “result.sah” and “user_info.sah” from your system, and then restart SETI@home. This is probably fallout from the user database crash a few days ago. Sorry for the inconvenience.

    That should do it, it worked for me.

  • Dial-A-Song

    Leo Laporte is putting together a Linux box for a next-gen TMBG Dial-A-Song.  Read all about it: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.

  • 6.02×10^23, Baby!

    Chris Heilman:

    Today is Mole Day, celebrating Avogadro’s number. From 6:02am until 6:02pm. It should be until 10:50pm (ten to the twenty third hour.) Thanks, Alireza!

    Wow, I’ve missed the ‘technical’ Mole Day, but I like to celebrate Mole Day all day long.  Thanks for the heads up, Chris.  Happy Mole Day to all.

  • Uh oh!

    I’ve been trying to sign up for Sony Eircsson’s Developer site, but I keep getting the following (amusing) error:

    Uh oh!

  • Jabber Releases Server For Windows

    CNet:

    Jabber sells proprietary instant-messaging software–both the software application people use for online chat and the server software needed to route the messages over the networks. Until now, its server software worked only on Linux and Solaris, Sun Microsystems’ version of Unix.

    Excuse me?  Proprietary?  I guess they mean that it’s closed source.  It is by no means ‘proprietary’ though.  It fully complies with the Jabber/XMPP specs, which are a bajillion times less ‘proprietary’ than pretty much any other IM protocol in existance.

    Maybe ‘proprietary’ is a corporate buzzword that makes it more attractive than that hippy ‘open source’ stuff.  I’m not sure.

    More information can be found in Jabber’s press release.  Of course there is an official open source server implementation as well as a list of jabber server implementations. Gobs and gobs of information can be found at jabber.org.

  • Does Windows Violate the DMCA?

    Frank just read in a German magazine that Windows itself might be in violation of the DMCA.  This is classic.  Earlier this month a college student pointed out that you could defeate (er, circumvent) the copy protection built in to some CDs by SunComm by pressing the shift key.  That’s right, lots and lots of DRM out the door just by pressing the shift key when you insert the CD.

    It follows that Windows is a tool that circumvents copy protection technology.  It is then in violation of the DMCA because it is a copy protection circumvention device.  How classic is that?

  • Sony DSC-T1: Slim 5 Megapixel Camera

    DPReview, Imaging Resource and others have info on Sony’s credit card style five megapixel $550ish digital camera.  It uses the same style of in-camera optics that make the Minolta Dimage X series of cameras so cool.

    I like the fact that they put a Zeiss lens on that puppy.  Good specs all around, but I’m worried about the possibility of vignetting like the Dimage X/Xi/Xt’s tend to do.  We shall see.

  • Sony DSC-U40 Analysis

    Imaging Resource has the info on the new Sony DSC-U40, Sony’s latest itty bitty sleek camera.  I think that Sony is missing the point a little bit here.  They started the U series with the U10, which is pretty much a 1.3 megapixel version of my 2 megapixel U20.  Then they came out with the U30 which is a little bigger with a mirror so you can take stylish self portraits.  The U60 is a weird all weather model.

    It looks like the U40 is a good bit more compact (my U20 is still a subcompact camera and it is almost a year old now), as it runs on Memory Stick Duo.  I didn’t see any size specs in the press release, but you can bet that it’s a good bit smaller.  Street price should end up around $200.  These are all good things, except that it’s still a 2 megapixel camera.

    2 megapixels is fine, and it’s probably a good sweet spot in super duper compact cameras, but I’d really love to see something in the U20/U40 size range that was maybe even just a little more high rez (is 3.34 too much to ask?) and costs a little bit more.  Given that the U series started with 1.3 and pretty quickly moved up to 2.0, the next logical step would be 3+ megapixel, and soon.

    I hope that Sony continues to innovate in this awesome product line.  Sadly my DSC-U20 doesn’t get as much use nowadays, as my cel phone has a low quality but really convenient camera.  Continuing pressures from the cameraphone market will definately dictate lots of competition and lower margins in the $200ish price range.

    Bottom Line: As long as the DSC-U40 lives up to its heritage, it will definitely be a good buy at $200.  If you’re looking for a zoom, look elsewhere.  This camera just has a relatively wide angle 33mm lens, and that’s okay.  If it’s anything like the DSC-U20’s lens, you’ll deal with it.

  • BitTorrent is Changing Everything (But You Already Knew That)

    I was looking for some downtime tonight, but there really isn’t much on television.  I wasn’t really in the mood for any of the DVDs that are kicking around.  I don’t have anything of note in VHS format in front of me.

    What did I do?

    I pointed my browser to my favorite repository of TV show torrent files and started downloading a CSI episode from the first season.  Then the phone rang.  About five minutes or so later I wandered back to the computer.  The file was 76% done with just a few minutes later.  In the amount of time that it took me to write this, the file has finished downloading.  Now I’m burning it to a VCD so that I can pop it in the DVD player.

    I can guarantee you that a year or two ago the bandwidth and the tech (Thanks, Bram!) would not have been ready for something like this.  Now it Just Works.  Pardon me while I hop offline for a bit and watch my tv show (01×07 for those keeping score).

  • Movie Trends: Kill Bill and Lost in Translation

    Kill Bill

    I saw Kill Bill Volume 1 over the weekend.  I enjoyed it in a queasy blood and body count kind of way.  At the end of Volume 1, I cursed Tarantino for splitting it in two.  It’s understandable, but I still want to see the other half NOW!

    According to fanboy site comingsoon.net, Kill Bill Vol. 2 will be out February 20, 2004.  At least I don’t have to wait too long.

    I was curious how the movie did, so I hopped over to Yahoo Movies to check the box office stats.  $12 million on the second week is respectable, but kind of dissappointing.  In two weeks its managed to pick up over $43 million, which again is not horrible, but I expected more out of such a good movie (IMHO of course).  I guess the gore/death/blood factor was pretty high up there.  I wonder what had to be cut in order to squeeze in to an ‘R’ rating.  I can’t wait to see the four disc unrated directors cut collections edition on DVD.

    Lost in Translation

    While I was at Yahoo Movies, I decided to check in on another movie that I quite enjoyed a few weeks ago: Lost in Translation.  It’s one of those movies that isn’t destined to be a big money maker.  I’ll bet somebody looses some money on the project, but it was an excellent Sundance/Cannes style flick.

    Lost in Translation showed up at number 11 in the box office this weekend, six weeks after release.  It pulled in just under $2 million and has grossed just under $21 million so far.  What is impressive about the weekend gross is that it was shown in only 771 theatres, yielding approximately $2470 per theatre.  The #10 movie this week (The Rundown) hit about $2.8 million in 2099 theatres.  That’s only $1325 per theatre.  The release below (Secondhald Lions) yields about $1170 per theatre.

    So Lost in Translation isn’t doing great, but it’s definitely filling up the few theatres that it is in pretty well.  I’m glad.

  • Local Area Security Linux 0.4

    Local Area Security 0.4 was released over the weekend.  L.A.S is based on Knoppix with a focus on security tools.  It looks like a bunch of new tools were added to this release.

  • Quicklinks

    • TyStudio “is a GPL’ed set of tools for extracting, editing, and converting of tivo tystreams to standard video/audio formats. This is done without re-encoding, so its a rather fast process. TyStudio is also entirely standards based; Every component of tystudio can be substituted with your favorite third party software (except tydemux of course).”  Does this work with Series 2 tivos?
    • Must check out Scalado’s stuff later.
    • Nelson on scaling sprites.  Wow, that’s way cool!
    • Copyfight: DMCA vs. Academic Research. “In other words, what the Internet enables in scientific research, the DMCA taketh away.”
    • Simon Willison gets the word out on the Python Web SIG.
    • Dan Gillmor points to Audacity as mentioned by KevinMarks.
    • Jakob Nielsen announces the 10 best intranets of 2003.  If you’d like to get into the details, you can also read the 175 page design annual (with 97 juicy screenshots!)
    • Russ picked up a Saturn Vue.  He had hopped on IRC from the dealership yesterday.  Ahh, technology.  Good luck driving a stick in San Francisco! 🙂
    • PyPI announces the release of Karrigell 1.3 beta.  It is a web app framework (in Python of course) that also includes Gadfly for its SQL backend.
    • I moblogged a soldier going home and a LED sign from the cool parking system currently in beta at BWI airport.
    • Must start reading Hacknot.
    • MT-Blacklist takes care of that pesky comment spam in Movable Type.
  • The Inquirer Reports from Microprocessor Forum

    The Inquirer has two interesting articles from the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose.  The first is a good roundup.  No major announcements from Intel or AMD, but it covers Transmeta’s Efficeon, IBM’s Power5, and the Fujitsu SPARC64 VI.

    They also show a picture of an 8 way power5 MCM with a total of 144MB of cache.  That’s a monster!

  • Generic Linkdump #237

    Clearing the tabs at the end of the day:

    • Newsfeeds.com is for those who download lots of Usenet stuff.  I get a Giganews account with my Comcast account, but sometimes you need to leech (er download) more than a gig each month.
    • What kind of snake is that?
    • Ian Bicking dislikes the unittest module.
    • Gizmodo notes new GPS-enabled phones from Moto for Nextel.
    • BBC: the knife find is kinda scary.
    • What do you mean Klingon is not unicode?
    • Keith Ray: how to go faster.
    • Must subscribe to Steve Olechowski’s blog.
    • Shawn Honnick grew up in Kensington.  Must subscribe to his feed too.
    • According to Rob Flickenger (blue hair) iTunes uses _daap._tcp. to announce itself in Rendezvous-speak.
    • The Feature: “American Teens: Stupid or Spoiled?”
    • I did a good bit of moblogging today.
    • iTunes takes up a good bit of resources.  I’m not complaining, and I don’t really notice it on my laptop.  iTunes works fine on my laptop, but it refuses to allow me to add MP3 files or play from the CD-ROM on a desktop machine that I have it installed on.  It’s pretty much unusable on that machine.
    • Jim says Zinf works well and is lightweight.
  • Remembering Multics

    osViews remembers Multics, which went to the big scratch disk in the sky last year.

  • My Foo Camp Gallery

    I did most of my picture taking at foo camp with my mobile phone.  Most of the pictures are on my moblog.  I did take a few pictures here and there with my Sony DSC-U20.  You can find them at my foo camp gallery.

    Some personal favorites: My campsite, gadgets galore, Russ’ hand in my picture, and Halo at 37,000 feet.